The frescoes known today are so varied in their imaginative power, function, and themes, and so masterfully executed, that this body of work has long been recognized as a culminating moment in the history of Western art.<BR>Italian Frescoes: High Renaissance and Mannerism, 1510-1600 - illustrated with 460 reproduced full-color images and 60 black-and-white illustrations and plans - presents the full spectrum of this epochal achievement. Authors Julian Kliemann and Michael Rohlmann pay equal attention to religious frescoes, which in this period extended and enriched a venerable tradition, and secular imagery. During the cinquecento in Italy hardly a single opulent residence, villa, or palace belonging to a cardinal or aristocrat was not decorated in some fashion with mural painting, which developed in an unprecedented variety of forms.